Excusez-moi...

…il y a de la viande dans les légumes

The final visit to Quimper happened today. And at the same time as saying goodbye to our old haunts, we had to do all the shopping for our birthday presents…mine being the 1st September and his being on the 13th, while he is still in France and while I am in England. So this was pretty much our last chance to do any sort of present shopping in a bigger town. So what did I get him? Not telling…

This picture is taken from one of the many cafés of Quimper. This particular one does rather nice smoothies, and has very colourful chairs…but I do believe that the horse makes this picture! All around Quimper are men in traditional Breton dress with their horses and their carriages…traditional tourist fare as well I guess! I don’t think they do any sort of spoken tour, just take their passengers on a circuit around Quimper. However, the horses look healthy and happy so it isn’t as bad as some of those I have seen elsewhere!

So we had been looking forward to our meal out for quite a while, as every customer who had been to this restaurant had absolutely loved it, some even saying that it had “made their holiday”. I had duly rang up to ask if they could provide any sort of alternative to meat. Surprisingly, they said that there would be no problem changing the set menu…so we were both looking forward to a nice meal where Thom didn’t have to eat a salad for his main course! As soon as we arrived…well, oh dear lord. We were definitely the youngest in there by about twenty years…which is fine, but to say that the atmosphere was distinctly frosty with most tables barely speaking to each other would not be a lie! The only people that were speaking apart from us were an old French couple next to us, and both of us kept breaking into laughter because it was just so awkward. It didn’t help that there was no background music to even break the tension! At this point we should have probably left, heeding the warning signs, but we had been looking forward to this for such a long time. After waiting twenty minutes or so, an amuse-bouche arrived…for me, a tiny lardon cake, a watermelon ball on a piece of chorizo and some oyster cream…for Thom, a curl of carrot, a watermelon ball (without the chorizo) and some squirty cream with basil in it. Which of course set us into hysterics then due to the awkward atmosphere anyway, with everyone looking at us, just made us laugh even harder. I didn’t believe Thom at first when he said that he had squirty cream, but as soon as I tasted it I realised he was telling the truth…

Now amuse-bouches are one thing, but we thought things would probably improve with our starters – I mean, anything more than starter, main and dessert is always welcome…and if it is a bit iffy, oh well! Again we waited, about another twenty minutes for our starters to arrive. Mine was crab and tomato mille feuille, with some random mandarin segments which, to be completely honest, did not work flavour-wise at all. Thom, well he got some more carrot curls, two types of melon (lucky boy!), lettuce, tomato and cucumber on a plate. Again, not 100% certain those flavours worked, but at least we had some sort of food in front of us! At this point it was starting to go dark (at the point when we thought we would have finished our meal!), so we asked to be moved inside before our main arrived. No help from any waiters to take cutlery, glasses, plates, bottles as well as our bags from the day out in Quimper…so we did two trips, much to the amusement of the chatty old French couple next to us!

Possibly because we changed table, that must have taken our order back to the beginning or something, because we then had to wait another forty minutes to get our main meals. Which were only worth writing home about in an oh-dear-lord-how-average for mine…but Thom’s, well. So Thom got a mushroom omelette with vegetables and sautéed potatoes. We actually got the same vegetables and everything, the only difference being that Thom’s vegetables had small chunks of meat in them. Yes, there was meat in the vegetables. With the first forkful, Thom had noticed and pulled out the hidden meat, and so we sorted through the rest of the vegetables (mine as well!) and only found meat in Thom’s. As if someone had pulled off bits of flesh from a beef fillet, it was pink and brown and very much meat. So, of course, we sent it back. Cue another fifteen minute wait to get said food back. The dessert was fine, I mean, what can you get wrong with a dessert?! So now was time to pay the bill, which for the two of us with a bottle of the cheapest alcohol came to 64 euros. Shocked? We knew it was going to be that much, but decided to have a quiet word with the manager and see if we could have any sort of money as they had managed to royally screw up the vegetarian option. To our amazement, she turned to us and said that we were liars! She then went into the kitchen to ask the chef what he had put in the omelette, to which his reply was of course “mushrooms”. She then came back out and pretty much said “I told you so” to which I had to explain that the meat was in the vegetables and point out the waitress who took the plate back into the kitchen. The manager then went over to the waitress who backed our point up…but then the manager had the gall to turn round and say that she had said that there wasn’t any meat on the plate!! It then just got ridiculous, with the manager full on shouting at us in front of the rest of the restaurant. We were accussed of making it up, and that the meat was “thinly sliced mushrooms”…to which I replied “pink and brown meat-like thinly sliced mushrooms?!”. Before it descended into a slanging match and the gendarmes were called, we paid up out of disgust…and Thom wanted to take their hanging baskets to get some of our money back.

We didn’t. But we wanted to.